The present invention relates to a license key, and more specifically, to automatic management of a license key.
Many software applications and hardware enhancements require the entry of license key information for their use. This license key information is typically stored on a planar or a daughter card which may not be available to an end-user, who may not even be aware of how the functionality was installed, or may have been lost by the end-user. As a result, when a system recovery or upgrade process that requires the license key information to be re-input is performed, the user may need to follow a manual process to request a new key. This may lead to a long system outage or even replacement of hardware requiring the license key. In addition, data loss may result from the system booting up with a different configuration due to the absence of the software and/or hardware requiring the license key.